Tricks that make a coat work ;)
A Good Coat Will Always Be A Great Investiment. It’s the sort of thing mothers say to daughters bebore packing off to university. Give me the choice between a coat and a party dress, and i will always plump for the latter. There’s smth so thuddingly practical, so schoolish about the idea of investing in a proper coat for winter. At the same time, there’s smth guilt-inducing about it too, particulary if it’s the sort of coat that only works at night and would make you look mad if you wore it on the school run.
Note what a key component they are of this winter’s collections: there are trapeze coats from Chanel Couture, cinched - waisted fullskirters from Oscar De La Renta, Marni and Dries Van Noten, brass - buttoned, navalinspired numbers from Burberry Prorsum and soft dressing-gown wrap style from Lanvin.
”It’s definetely a moment for coats,” says Burberry’s Christopher Bailey. ”They’re a more modern way of dressing, I feel, than jackets, and at the same time part of our cultural heritage, part of that whole British tradicion of not being properly dressed unless you’re wearing a coat and gloves.”
”When a woman looks in the mirror she wants to look tall, she wants to look lean, she wants to look put together,” says the mother of all coat people, Donna Karan. ”She wants to accent the positive and delete the negative, and the best way to do that is with a great coat.”
When all the coats I am to tes-drive at the door, I get thoroughly over-excited, but the enthusiasm falters a little when I try on the first, a full - length, full skirted redingote byAlberta Ferreti with a detachable panel of inky blue satin up the front: fabelous on the catwalk; considerably less on me. Lesson number one : long, dramatic styles and heavy textures are for tall people only. And it’s not good trying to get away with smaller size - as it is so easy to do if you’re trying it on when the wheather’s still good and your wearing a T-shirt underneath.
The experiment is over. Since writing this piece I’ve bought no fewer than three new coats, one of them an unequivocally evening trench of fire engine - red satin. I don’t know when I am going to wear it, or what with, but the mere fact that it’s enjoying pride of place in my wardrobe makes me feel more pulled - together than ever before.
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